he U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says. The change will begin in August.
By 2015, the U.S. Postal Service is expected to be losing money at a rate of $20 billion a year. But the Post Office has a plan intended to help stop the bleeding -- or at least slow it down. Next week, it will begin testing a new same-day delivery service called "Metro Post."
As Hurricane Sandy began tearing up the East Coast, thousands evacuated their homes, schools closed, and millions of businesses and government offices told their workers to stay home. But a few employers did not: the Supreme Court, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Home Depot, Lowe's, and the U.S. Postal Service.
The U.S. Postal Service, on the brink of default on a second multibillion-dollar payment it can't afford to pay, is sounding a new cautionary note that having squeezed out all the cost savings within its power, the mail agency's viability now lies almost entirely with Congress.
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service said Monday it is seeking to move quickly to close 252 mail processing centers and slow first-class delivery next spring, citing steadily declining mail volume. The cuts are part of $3 billion in reductions aimed at helping the agency avert bankruptcy next year.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has announced his latest initiative to save the post office from bankruptcy. (Hint: Improving customer service isn't a part of it.) His master plan: Hike the cost of mailing a letter for real people, and cut prices for junk mail.
Could your bank teller could go postal? Offering basic consumer banking services in the form of prepaid debit cards is just one of many ideas the U.S. Post Office is considering to boost its bottom line. And even with stamp costs going up to 45 cents, the USPS is in dire need of outside-the-box solutions to its budget woes.
It'll cost a penny more to mail a letter next year. The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that it will increase postage rates on Jan. 22, including a one-cent increase in the cost of first-class mail, to 45 cents.
If the USPS went into bankruptcy, would anyone care? Not according to former UPS board member Gary MacDougal, who argued in a scathing attack last week that "the rapid growth of email, online bill paying," and private parcel delivery firms like UPS and FedEx has made the Post Office obsolete. Statistics suggest he's right.
As the U.S. Postal Service works feverishly to close its budget gap, UPS is taking advantage of the turmoil to highlight how much more innovative its brown-clad couriers can be, compared to their blue-suited cousins.
The U.S. Postal Service warned that it will miss federal payments totaling an estimated $6.8 billion by October, unless the government steps in.
Since the recession began, more than 8 million Americans have lost their jobs. But perhaps even more surprising is the small number of companies that are responsible for laying off such a large percentage of today's unemployed workers.
Do unwanted credit card solicitations clog your mailbox? Are you still steamed about the taxpayer bailout of big banks while ordinary Americans were losing their jobs and homes? Here's how to put those together to fuel a grassroots bailout of the Post Office.
Fourteen months after the last price hike, the USPS has proposed a two-cent increase in the cost of first-class postage, which would push the stamp to 46 cents. If approved, the new price would be effective Jan. 2, 2011. Still, the higher rate won't fix what really ails the service.
Faced with an estimated $7 billion shortfall in 2010, the United States Postal Service is contemplating radical cuts that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery and raise the cost of postage. But to really turn the USPS's problems around, it will either need to be directly funded by the government or it needs the freedom to set its own prices, policies, and hours.
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